Vienna International Airport at Schwechat began in 1938 as a military airfield built after Austria's annexation.
It passed through wartime use and British occupation before opening to civil traffic in 1954, replacing the historic Aspern aerodrome. A single runway served the growing airport until a second, intersecting runway opened in 1977, and Vienna developed steadily as Austrian Airlines' home and a meeting point between East and West during the Cold War, when it was one of the few western gateways with deep connections behind the Iron Curtain.
That east-west bridging role blossomed after 1989, as Vienna became the natural hub between Western Europe and the newly opened markets of Central and Eastern Europe. The Skylink project, today's Terminal 3, opened in 2012 after years of delays and a famous cost scandal, giving Austrian Airlines and its Lufthansa Group parent a modern hub facility.
A proposed third runway produced a landmark legal saga when a court initially rejected it in 2017 partly on climate grounds, a world-first ruling later overturned. Low-cost competition exploded after 2018, with Ryanair and Wizz Air basing aircraft in Vienna and driving the airport to record passenger numbers.